Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee’s journey from teenager to world leader began on a dusty football field near the fish market in Monrovia, Liberia.

It was there that she she sat every day, clad in white, with thousands of women – mothers and grandmothers – who were praying, singing and fasting. They protested so they could have peace after 14 years of brutal civil war that had killed their men, turned their girls into child prostitutes and little boys into ruthless soldiers.

“When you are faced with such a situation,” Gbowee said, “you ask yourself: Do we sit or do we fight? If we don’t fight, we will die. If we fight, we might die. We wanted to leave our children with the narrative that we died fighting for their freedom.”

Speaking at a recent event at Soka University titled “Outrageous Acts of Peace,” Gbowee talked about the pent-up rage that pushed her into the spotlight and the passion for peace that shaped her as an activist and taught her to forgive.

Gbowee grew up in Bong County in central Liberia and left for the capital city of Monrovia when she was only 17 with dreams of becoming a pediatrician. This was just before the war began in 1989.

“The war started one morning,” she recalls. “And by mid-afternoon, I was a woman.”

The conflict was fueled by economic inequality, a struggle to control the country’s rich natural resources and deep-rooted rivalries among various ethnic groups including the descendants of the freed American slaves who founded the nation in 1847. The country was under the dictatorship of Charles Taylor and his warlords. Taylor became the country’s president in 1997 after which the violence and bloodshed escalated.

A LEADER IS BORN

Gbowee spent the next 14 years running from danger and keeping her children alive. She remembers a day during those turbulent times when she and her children were running from gun-wielding warlords, a day in which they already had walked for seven hours.

In the years that followed, Gbowee said, she became numb. When the war began, she would feel shock at the sight of a dead body.

“But I started getting used to it,” she said. “I could jump over a corpse and keep walking without even thinking about who it was or how it happened. When evil and violence become a part of your life, you become tired of crying.”

The women of Liberia had nothing to lose anymore. They had already lost too much.

“It worked to our advantage,” she said.

Gbowee, a devout Christian, rallied her Muslim sisters to form the Women in Peace Network. A bullet doesn’t know if you’re Christian from Muslim, she told them. They were in this together.

She urged women to go on a sex strike – withholding sex from their husbands. It got attention – both from the men and the media.

The women persisted with their protests, in the sun and pouring rain. They finally got their wish in April 2003 when Taylor agreed to meet them.

On April 23 of that year, more than 2,000 women joined Gbowee, who stood on a stage facing Taylor outside his executive mansion. This is what she told him: “We are tired of war. We are tired of running. We are tired of begging for bulgur wheat. We are tired of our children being raped. We are now taking this stand, to secure the future of our children. Because we believe, as custodians of society, tomorrow our children will ask us, ‘Mama, what was your role during the crisis?’”

PATH TO PEACE AND FORGIVENESS

After that meeting, Taylor agreed to attend peace talks in Accra, Ghana. Gbowee led a delegation of Liberian women to Accra to put pressure on warring factions during that process. At first, the women sat demonstrating outside the fancy hotels where the negotiators met. But they grew tired when the meetings went into July 2003, when no progress was made and the violence continued to escalate in Liberia.

Gbowee led about 200 women inside the hotel holding signs outside the entrance to the meeting room. The women would not budge from that hallway until an accord was reached, Gbowee told them. When the men tried to leave the hall, Gbowee and the women threatened to rip their clothes off. In West Africa, it’s considered a terrible curse to see a married or elderly woman deliberately bare herself.

The Liberian war ended officially weeks after this episode, with the signing of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement on Aug. 18, 2003.

What the women did, in Gbowee’s words, “marked the beginning of an end.” The women’s movement also led to the 2005 election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president of Liberia, the first elected female leader of an African country.

In 2011, Sirleaf and Gbowee, leaders of the women’s movement in Liberia, along with Yemeni human rights activist Tawakkol Karman, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Taylor was imprisoned in The Hague and faced trial for war crimes. In April 2012, he was found guilty of all charges, including terror, murder and rape. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Gbowee was placed in charge of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Liberia. But it wasn’t successful, she said.

“It did not work because it was mere talk, there was no political commitment,” Gbowee said. “For reconciliation to take place, people must be ready and willing to forgive and reconcile. That was simply not happening because people were not ready.”

But for her, the longer she kept anger and bitterness in her heart, the harder it became, Gbowee said. It wasn’t easy, but she knew she had to let go.

Gbowee calls forgiveness “a personal journey toward healing.” It’s not the end, but the beginning of a process.

When an act of evil or violence has taken place, an invisible bond is formed between the victim and the perpetrator, Gbowee said.

“You are deeply affected by it,” she said. “The mention of his name will ruin your day.”

For Gbowee, healing is not possible without forgiveness.

“Anger and pain are toxic,” she said. “You can never move on because you are always thinking about how to get back. You have to let go of that anger.”

She encourages victims of violence to “forgive” but “never forget.” She believes in justice and accountability. But without forgiveness, she says, the victim cannot move on.

“If you sincerely forgive, you cut off that invisible chain,” she said. “You are no longer tied to that person who did you wrong. Now, he is left with that chain until he seeks forgiveness from you. But the beauty is – you are free.”

Deepa Bharath covers religion for The Orange County Register and the Southern California Newspaper Group. Her work is focused on how religion, race and ethnicity shape our understanding of what it is to be American and how religion in particular helps influence public policies, laws and a region's culture. Deepa also writes about race, cultures and social justice issues. She has covered a number of other beats ranging from city government to breaking news for the Register since May 2006. She has received fellowships from the International Women's Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists to report stories about reconciliation, counter-extremism and peace-building efforts around the world. When she is not working, she loves listening to Indian classical music and traveling with her husband and son.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.